"The country will never stand for that"

The sum total of my opinion on whether Labour can win an election with Jeremy Corbyn as leader is that we don't know enough to make a reliable prediction. Moving on to something that doesn't quite constitute a settled opinion, here are two things I read in quick succession yesterday:

Item The First - The Daily Mash, Man who just got elected 'definitely unelectable'

Item The Second - Paul Addison, The Road to 1945: British politics and the Second World War (Pimlico edition, 1994)

From pp.14-15 of the Introduction:

"The [1945] election gave Labour its first independent majority in the House of Commons and its largest of the post-war era to date - 146 overall. The result came as a profound shock to most of the political world which, having divined public opinion by the old techniques of impressionism and wishful-thinking, was convinced that Churchill's charisma would carry the day. Hence the well-known story of the lady at Claridge's who was heard to exclaim: 'But this is terrible. They have elected a Labour government and the country will never stand for that.'* If one main theme of the home front is the evolution of a new consensus at the top, the other must be the movement of popular opinion below."

The only thing that elections tell us for sure is how people voted in that election. The only thing that press coverage tells us for sure is how the press are covering things. Beyond that, people need to show how they have arrived at their predictions and must be prepared to consider new information and different lines of reasoning. Anything else is just white noise.

* Addison's reference for this anecdote: J.L.Hodson, Home Front (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1947), I.

They didn’t build this – The “new” Manchester Skeptics group

If you search Meetup.com for “skeptics” in Manchester at the moment* you get the “Manchester Skeptics”. This group is described as being “a new 2015 group” but also has 132 “past Meetups”, 474 members, and was founded Nov 20th, 2009. A pretty impressive feat of time-bending organisation, I’m sure you’ll agree. How have the organisers achieved this staggering success?

Well… they didn’t. These are the successes of the Greater Manchester Skeptics Society, which has been the work of many dedicated volunteers, myself included, over the past six years. We built up that membership. We ran those events. We poured our time and energy into building this community, in some cases putting our own funds on the line where necessary in the hope that the gamble would pay off.

Unfortunately, being human and having a lot of plates to spin, we dropped one of the plates. Through a combination of (well-deserved) summer holidays, work stress, bereavement, job-hunting and side projects, exacerbated by a regrettable but inevitable amount of miscommunication, there was a period in which our subscription to Meetup was up for renewal. With hindsight, we should have sorted it out sooner but then we were naïve enough to assume that none of our members would take advantage of the situation before the final deadline. We are, after all, a pretty friendly, supportive community.

But there’s always somebody who has to go and spoil things. For reasons which are still somewhat unclear, somebody else paid the subscription and took over the Meetup group. Rather than work with the existing organisers they removed our admin privileges and are now removing people from the group for either criticising their actions or for being “inactive”. They emailed the existing members to explain their grand plan, insulting the “previous” organisers in the process. They’ve changed the name, the branding, the description of the group, cancelled future events (on the site only – the events themselves are going ahead as planned) and added links to some rather dubious websites. To all intents and purposes, they have created a “new” group, exactly how they want it to be.

But they’re still passing off our hard work as their own.

That large membership and the long list of past events, both of which lend an air of success to their group - they amount to misrepresentation. You want to start a new group for the discussion and promotion of skepticism (or scepticism, whichever you prefer)? Have at it. The more the merrier. But have the guts to build it yourself, from scratch. The more established groups will be more than happy to help, if asked.

Of course, now that they've caused such disruption to our operation and our members by removing scheduled events from the calendar, spreading misinformation, accusing us of mismanagement or incompetence and refusing to return control of the mailing list (which, remember, was created for a group with different stated aims, different organisers and so on), future cooperation with the wider network of Skeptics in the Pub groups seems unlikely to say the least.

Even when trying to suppress all my anger and frustration (some of which is directed at myself for not realising this could happen) I can’t attribute what they’ve done to pure motives. Why take over a group only to change everything? Why not start a new group? It’s difficult not to assume that they preferred to take the opportunity to buy our membership and our record of events from Meetup.

Not illegal. Not outside the rules of the site. But also not the actions of considerate, ethical, honest human beings.


*That moment being 9:45am, 20/08/2015

______________

Below is a copy of the email they sent. I considered going through it with a red pen but on reflection, I think it speaks well enough for itself. Suffice to say that GMSS exists in the real world, beyond the statistics on Meetup, that the group is active and thriving, and that we have a great working relationship with our fantastic regular venues (none of which deserve the kind of insult levelled at them here).

Welcome to your new skeptic meetup

So you may have noticed a lot of changes to the group lately and have many questions. I hope in satisfy your curiosity and hopefully inspire you back into the skeptic community so lets begin.

Firstly we have acquired this group after the overly bureaucratic leadership team failed to make the small payment fees that are accosted to the organizers. In the several days left to fix the issue no one coffed up the 15£ and just as in real life if you don’t pay your bills your house gets repossessed. Finally to our surprise meetup.com gave us full ownership, this is actually a common occurrence on meetup when groups are failing.

We

Who is we you say, we are two passionate meetup organizers that already run two fast growing active meetups in Manchester. We live here and support the community via scientifically driven food and mental health groups. We also have been interested in science and the like for many years and have a large collection of materials to share/recommend which to our surprise we notice was totally vacant from the group more on that soon in the pages section.

Out with the Old

Briefly here are some clues as to why the group was failing to grow which likely lead to it changing hands.

One fact that resonates this point most is the very poor active members rates of the group. If you don't run a meetup you won't know about this hidden feature but it gives clear graphs and insight into how much your members actually care about the kind of group you create.

We also noticed a very large users base hasn't even checked the meetup in over a year (insome cases 6 years!), very poor by our standards. It's often a clear reflection that users aren't happy with the group's direction. Meeting new people especially critical thinkers can be fairly daunting if not handled properly. One worry sign of this was how common a users had attended once and never come back, another statistic that is only viewable by organizers.

“Too many cooks spoil the broth” they say and there was a lot we noticed about the overly bureaucratic nature of the organisation. Many leaders and a lengthy list of rules etc seemed very authoritarian by design. We personally prefer conversations in almost all cases whether conflict or nurture. In our previous meetups we have had much success with taking a true liberal attitude. Being down to earth in way that makes members feel they are equal to the organisers seems lacking here and something we really want to change. At the end of the day meetup is a tool that we are part of and nothing more. We want to embolden the group's properties to be the most conducive conduit towards real human connection within the skeptically inclined whether you’re an old member or brand new.

The leadership team has indeed messaged us for a second chance but we feel that it would be doing a disservice to the group's quality to go back to the old ways. Meetup takes a lot of effort and if it’s not there meetups evitable becomes a stagnate contact lists which is mostly what we found. You may have noticed this effect present in a lot of “Top” meetup groups that have over 1000 members but only 10 people at their events.

Last msg sent below by old leader(in our group ther wont really be leaders)

“Hi Sophie, I'm the current elected chair of Greater Manchester Skeptics (and have been for the past three years or so - you can see that I'm the event organiser from the Meetup page). I'm currently on my holidays in Cornwall so have been away from technology for a couple of weeks. I'm sure you have stepped up and taken over our Meetup group with the best of intentions, however could you please step down as organiser so we can carry on using our group. As you can see we are more than a Meetup group, as we also have a website and Facebook page.If you're interested in attending future events you are more than welcome and you can put yourself forward for election at the AGM.”

Unfortunate but no accident...

In with the New

Overall I hope you are starting understand the fact of the matter that it was high time this group needed to relaunch whether it was us or others. I hope you also see that we make a lot of careful consideration towards any aspect possible that we can tweak in terms of quality.  We have already begun to implementing and planning many of our ideas to get the group going with a bang.

We have already and will continue to embolden the ascetic of the meetup which members have already told us has a much fresher look. Notable also was the low quality photography which will be rectified as we have access to high quality DSLRs to make some memorable moments.

We also want to improve the quality of members without compromising on the openness needed to have open skepticism.  Obviously anyone should be able to come along and challenge the strength of the groups skeptical nature that said flakes are flakes. I was reminded of this just this week in a recent Tony Robbins video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfDTdKH1GhY

The point being not only logically but in our experience culling members that no show or never attend helps the health of the group. We hate the idea of acting like a group that is big when really we have many faux members.

Last to mention will be the improvement of locations the Church Inn being a perfect example of everything that we don’t want. Old, low quality and it has the word church in it. We like the idea of constantly changing the location as there are many quality places in Manchester to explore. Currently we are looking towards Font Chorlton its basically a brand new contemporary facility with high quality service at a similar price.

Lets get together

I hope this honest message takes a good chunk of your queries away and makes you feel safe in our hands. We also hope this message pumps some much needed excitement into your future social life.

As mentioned we want to be leaders only by administration as we feel members should feel equally valued. Equal in conversation and opportunity to speak their views so tell your friends and join for some exciting conversations and connections at our next social.

Cheers.

p.s.

We realise there will always be those opposed to change as a counselor I can speak with experience that change is gross to most people. So inevitably we expect some drop off from the hardcore fans of the old group maybe even some flames. Ultimately we took over the group without breaking any laws or even meetup.com policy. So threats etc don’t cause us to have any hard feelings either way so if you want to leave the group and think of other options we still support that and you're still always welcome.

Life is too short to be angry.

Good luck in life and everything you aspire to be.

Old, fluffy feminist allsorts from the bottom of my think-bag

None of these things are new, I'm just putting them in an appropriate place as part of an ongoing spring-cleaning operation. The part of the spring-cleaning I've reached is that bit where I pretend to be organising my thoughts in order to avoid organising actual objects such as the large piles of papers which occupy every corner of every room in the flat.

Thing The First: An article from a couple of years ago by Jen Dziura which says a lot of sensible things about how yelling at somebody in a clearly emotional, irrational way is not a debating skill but is somehow considered more acceptable (on TV, at least) than letting your opponent complete a full sentence. I particularly like this illustration of why "dominating the discussion" shouldn't be viewed as "winning the argument":

On a talk radio show, I would undoubtedly lose the fight to grab airspace for myself, just as I often lose the fight for airspace in many barroom discussions and bloviating dinner-table talks. So obviously my ideas are invalid.
The way most “debates” happen, on television and otherwise, is like beginning a writing contest by making all the writers physically fight each other for paper. Obviously, writers who don’t get any paper are the worst writers, right?

This seems especially relevant with all the UK election TV debate stuff. It could be argued that we need politicians who can make their point effectively while being shouted down and jeered at from all sides, because that's what they have to do in the House of Commons. What would be better all round is if our Parliament resembled an intelligible exchange of facts and opinions, rather than a prison riot.

Thing The Second: A piece from last year called "Notes From a Boner", from the truly awesome and invaluable Captain Awkward blog. Most posts contain thoughtful and supportive advice on all manner of life problems and I highly recommend it for anyone who has a relationship, friendship, work or family issue, or simply isn't sure if the thing they've been obsessing over all week is actually A Thing. This post is different, and is a lovely description of those many, many times when idiotic, sexist comments come streaking through life, mooning at everyone in sight:

And in every. freaking. internet discussion, there they are. Fucking boners. Women can be discussing literally any topic, and dudes will come interrupt to tell us how it makes boners feel. Sometimes they want to reassure us, like, when we talk about being fat as a feminist issue, or the constrictions of conventional beauty standards, they chime into say “But I like bigger girls.” Well thanks, Internet Stranger-boner! That totally makes up for every bad thing women have ever experienced at the hands of the patriarchy, which definitely for sure does not include you. Other times women will be talking about particle physics or literature or their very responsible jobs, like, running the world and stuff, and the boners feel left out and confused, so they just say completely inane stuff. As if “I would/would not do her” is the one true standard on earth.

[...]

I guess what I’m saying is that I need the boners to shut the hell up for a while. PEOPLE can speak, just, try to go like a month without letting your boner chime in to offer its thoughts on whether someone is sufficiently hot. Please. I beg you. 

Thing the Third: I was chatting to someone the other day and the topic of feminism came up. The conversation ran for a bit in a very well-worn groove: this person agrees with many of the progressive issues covered by the umbrella of feminism but thinks that that it goes too far sometimes and that the "going too far" is reflected in the name. He'd prefer it to be called "equalicism" or similar, to reflect that it isn't just advocating for women. Well... yes, but no. It would be nice if the names of things conveyed to absolutely everyone, with perfect accuracy, the nature of that thing. But they don't. They can't. And on top of the natural limitations of language, some people are always going to go out of their way to assign other meanings to things, especially to political movements advocating for change to which they are opposed.

If we start bending over backwards to accommodate people who can't be bothered to find out what something actually is before kicking off against it, then we will spend our lives as immobile pretzels. If someone said that they'd like to hire you but they've heard that some people with your first name have been known to punch koalas and could you please call yourself something else in future, I suspect you'd withdraw your application.

---

*** THIS NEXT PART IS ABOUT A PARTICULAR SWEAR WORD AND WILL, I'M SURE, GET RIGHT UP SOME PEOPLE'S NOSES. If you're in a bad mood or are sick of having this argument with people who definitely are sexist trolls and you're therefore likely to dislike me if you read on then please stop here. Please. I don't want to annoy anyone but I do need to get this off my chest.***

Slightly Related Thing The Fourth: On the subject of the word "cunt" and whether using it as an insult is necessarily sexist. I don't think it is in all contexts, no matter how many times I read people's arguments on this matter (and holy crap, this doesn't half come up a lot). However, because a lot of people on a lot of websites I visit frequently find the word offensive, I've decided not to throw it about online. I completely understand the absolutist position. Particularly for websites which are continually under siege from armies of commenters, well-meaning or otherwise, seeking to question or attack every damn thing they say, I can see how the use of the word and a reluctance to stop using it once people have objected would be a huge red flag.

What gets my back up, not that I'm going to go whine about this on someone else's blog*, is the argument that over here in the UK, where we throw the word round more than in the USA and generally with less malice behind it, we're somehow ignorant of how offensive we're being. Especially when someone tells a British feminist that they shouldn't use the word, suggesting that they have somehow missed the fact that it refers to female genitalia, I can feel my claws start to lengthen. Words are complicated things. Context is complicated. I'm not arguing that someone else's feelings and associations upon hearing the word are less valid that my own. If you're upset by something then you have the right to ask someone to stop doing it. Equally, if you know a word upsets someone then by using it at them, you are accepting those feelings as a consequence.

But but BUT... words exist within a web of meanings formed by past usage and other cultural considerations. There are positive reasons for saying "cunt": it doesn't have that creepy, demeaning association with swords that "vagina" does. It can be pretty empowering, as a woman, to use that word about a part of myself, particularly when someone's expecting me to say something infantilised like "hoo-hah". It's pretty damn superb as a plot element in Atonement. It sounds so much better and more subversive than other swear words in a Lancashire accent (which I have, sometimes, depending on who I'm talking to). There are times, when talking to people who I'm pretty sure share my web of associations, when only that word will do. As much as I try to use "turd" or "arsehole" as my go-to insult, sometimes"fuck you, and the crashing wave of self-important twaddle you surfed in on" can only be capped off with the words "you cunt". I want people to stop being afraid of the word. I want it to be reclaimed rather than shunned. I certainly don't want it to become the sole property of Men's Rights Activists and only ever used to reduce whole human persons to the only one of their organs which is considered valuable to those... pigs. Calling someone a "cunt" was never a simple case of demonising a gender-specific orifice**. Yes, it can be used in a sexist way but there's a whole lot more going on and it would be a shame if all of that got stripped away leaving only the sexism.

So those are some of the things swirling round in my head when I consider using the word. And if I've carefully considered all of this, thought about my audience and the effect I'm trying to create, as writers - even ones in this quaint little backwater of Britain - tend to do, it would be nice if that effort wasn't ignored as running counter to the ONE TRUE MEANING of the word. Unlike racist insults, which are imposed by a dominant group in an act of dehumanisation and oppression, the words for body parts belong to everyone. People in that cultural context over there do not get to tell people in this cultural context over here that their word for a body part is always and forever off limits. Again, that doesn't mean that the people who have a reaction against the word are wrong, or that they should be subjected to the word more as retribution, just that both sides should acknowledge that these different contexts, associations and communication needs exist. In other words, if someone says that they don't personally find the word offensive and certainly had no intention of being sexist, try not to be a total earlobe about it.

---

*I've jumped into a comment section on this topic before and am sorry for having done so. There was an American writer complaining about the use of the word in a British TV show, several British people, including myself, offered our perspectives (which seemed valid as it was a script written by and for British people) and it all got very nasty. I'll admit that some of the pro-"cunt" arguments weren't very persuasive and echoed the defenses of some people when called out on racist or other definitely discriminatory language. It still doesn't make it right to point at another culture's output and declare "that very definitely means exactly what I think it means and it should be stopped" without properly listening to what people from that culture are telling you.

**If that's not a sensible way to use the term gender then please do tell me and maybe point me at some explanatory material. I keep trying to put the time in to making sure I don't get this wrong but I'm going to slip up sometimes and will require some prodding in the right direction. I don't intend to suggest here that the Venn diagram of people with vaginas and people who identify as women is a single circle or that it would be a particularly worthwhile diagram.

On the mutual compatibility of funbags and feminism.

This lunchtime, someone whose intellect I generally have a lot of respect for expressed the opinion that a woman who "goes out in a low-cut top to get men to buy her drinks" cannot call herself a feminist. This is the response I would have given had I not been busy refraining from shoving a fork up his nose.

Feminism is about the right to equal treatment, bodily autonomy, and questions of safety and consent. Unless the breasts in question have magic, hypnotic powers or emit mind-altering gases, there is no contradiction or hypocrisy here. What you're ranting about is a transaction consented to by equal parties, in a way that infringes on nobody's rights or even personal space. It may offend your sensibilities for whatever reason, but it does not run counter to feminist principles.

In so far as it isn't illegal and doesn't cause harm to others, what someone does on a night out is their own business and in no way affects their right to a progressive political or moral stance. This applies equally to a feminist enjoying her own attractiveness and a frequent drinker arguing in favour of the NHS. To be judged only on what is pertinent, rather than on irrelevant personal matters coloured by people's prejudices, is a right we should all be fighting for - not only when it affects us and the things we care about, but also regarding people who annoy the hell out of us.

By all means find fault with a person's reasoning. But if you dismiss their opinions wholesale or deny them the right to an opinion at all based on what they choose to do with their own body, don't you dare call yourself anything other than a fascist.

Incidentally, are there any clean forks about?

On Nate Phelps and "Leaving Hate Behind"

[The purpose of this post is mainly catharsis on my part, and I'm writing it in the full knowledge that describing my emotional reactions to some else's suffering is a self-indulgent frippery.]

As the final item on the schedule of this year's QED convention, Nate Phelps spoke about his childhood in the Westboro Baptist Church, and the series of "aha moments" he has experienced both while living under his father's rules, and since leaving home. It is an intensely moving story, told with great humanity and not without humour; his family are the butt of many scornful jokes, but his explanation of the often ridiculous inconsistencies in their interpretation of the bible are entirely without hate or derision.

I listened, unable to cry but full of tears and saturated with anger, sadness and impotence. It took every effort not to shout "Stop!" not at the speaker but at the past. All that mattered for much of that hour was pausing the story, removing the characters from this setting which was so desperately wrong, and setting the plot on a different course. And there was fear too - a plummeting sense of futility - once I realised when I'd last experienced the same feelings.

For several months last spring and summer, I did an internship at the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Nottinghamshire. There is an exhibition there and a memorial garden, but its main work is as a venue for survivors of the Holocaust to talk to school groups about their experiences. While there, I sat in on two of these talks, neither of which will ever quite leave me.

There is a sad and inevitable shift in Holocaust education and remembrance approaching as the number of living survivors decreases. It was pointed out by (I think) both speakers that the children present were realistically the last generation who would be able to listen to a Holocaust survivor in person. There is a great deal of work being done to record survivor testimony in order to give as close an approximation of this experience as possible to future generations, and this work is very important. However, no digital recreation could ever have the same emotional effect as being in a room with someone who is reliving, for you, the darkest episodes of their life.

My feeling on finishing the internship was gratitude that I had been given this opportunity, but also a sense that I could put a lid on those paralysing feelings. I assumed that unless I deliberately looked for an emotional response from myself, humanity's darkest episode* could become an increasingly distant (but nevertheless essential) object of study.

Nate Phelps has proven me wrong. Through his calm, measured explanation of his experiences, told with gut-wrenching self-control, he drew for his audience a picture, the essence of which was the same as that of the survivors' stories. They are stories of children forced to adapt to a situation in which family and community life was disrupted and destroyed by incomprehensible forces of hatred and blind, uncompromising conviction. They are also stories of survival, which show the deep scars which inhumanity leaves on those it doesn't kill, but also show what "leaving hatred behind" actually involves.

The fear I felt today was caused by realising that the "event" I dread the repetition of is not one massive occurrence which exists only in the past. I realised that there will always be an inexhaustible supply of "survivors"; incredible people who will retell and so relive everything that they want to forget, because we need to understand that their humanity was not stamped out. Every day, whether by individuals, groups, or whole nations, future survivors are being created through hatred, misplaced faith, indifference and inaction. The crimes and tragedies which create them will look very different, the scale will vary enormously, and comparisons will often seem sensationalist and distasteful, but the basic units will be the same; individual lives marked by violence, fear and a complete loss of self, where there should have been love, trust and hope.

I've thanked all three speakers for speaking, but couldn't explain that I was thanking them for making me feel this anger, sadness, impotence and fear. I couldn't possibly explain to someone's face how grateful I am to them for surviving not once, but every time they tell their story. I couldn't thank them for the way they carry their pain or the way they rebuilt themselves and their lives according to models they were never given but had to find for themselves. It seems such an inadequate, self-serving thing to do to say that they are an inspiration to someone who hasn't suffered at all.

I'm going to push all of this down again tomorrow, and get back to my thesis-writing and strategic cynicism and all the rest of it. But when I start to forget what's really important, I'll be forever grateful to have three borrowed memories to remind me, the newest of which is of a little boy being beaten by his father for refusing to hate enough.


*As many people view it, and it is a perfectly valid description in many ways. It's not the way I'd  describe the Holocaust when speaking as a researcher, but this is my gut reaction.

Q: When is a door not a door?

A. When it's a jar of angry worms.

That long-running men opening doors for women thing. Or offering them their seat on the bus. Very few people get worked up about this but rather more people seem to assume that they do. I think both areas are yawning pits of social awkwardness but that's because I'm all kinds of socially awkward.

This micro-musing by Peter Hitchens, tweeted by @RopesToInfinity is why I'm thinking through this now.* The key phrase is, "it's so deep it feels like an instinct". For Hitchens, holding a door open for a woman feels like the right thing to do. I'm sure that's what's going on with most men who habitually extend small courtesies to women; it just feels like the done thing. If you want to understand why some people might have a problem with this, ask yourself how it would feel to have a man treat another man in the same way.

Off the top of my head, I can think of three reasons why a man would feel a gut urge to hold a door open for another man**, other than the fact that he got there first. The same reasons apply to giving up your seat.

1. The other person is incapacitated in some way, maybe carrying something or on crutches.
2. The other person is a guest or someone whose comfort you feel in some way responsible for.
3. The other person is of a higher or lower professional standing and you are somehow trying to bridge that gap. You fuss around a superior because you want them to think well of you; you may show extra politeness towards a subordinate because you want to show them that you value them.

There will be others I haven't thought of. Again, I'm not talking about the universal politeness of not letting the door slam in someone's face after you've gone through it. I'm talking about the "deep" "instinct" that dictates that you should try to get to the door first and make a bit of a show of it, because that would be better than them opening the door themselves. With that in mind (and please imagine the situation as giving up your seat if you still don't get where I'm coming from), what does it convey to a woman if, all other factors being equal, a man goes to some extra effort to open a door for her?

1. That the man sees her as in some way incapacitated.
2. That the man sees her as a guest in this location, or feels somehow especially responsible for her comfort.
3. That the man sees some kind of difference in social or professional standing, which needs to be bridged.

The discomfort caused by the first two implications should be fairly clear. With point three, I'd like to emphasise that it doesn't matter which way that difference in status works. Regardless of whether it is yourself or the other person that you (or your deep-seated instincts) are placing on an ever-so slightly higher rung, the problem is that you're acting according to a supposed difference. Whether you'd class it as chivalry or a special favour, something in your brain has gone ACHTUNG: FEMALE and caused you to slightly change your behaviour.

The worry is that if someone displays that "deep", "instinctive" assumption of difference in one situation, and doesn't realise why they're doing it or how it might come across, what else might it affect?
___

*The resulting conversation also led me to this post, which is all kinds of excellent.
** Or a woman for another woman, or any other combination... I'm using the example of two men because it best shows the weirdness of what's going on. I'm not assuming that every reader is male, but I would like you to imagine yourself as male for the purpose of the exercise.

Eight Signs of a Bogus Historical Narrative

On Saturday afternoon, as an attendee of the QED convention in Manchester, I sat through a panel discussion entitled "Is Science the New Religion?". At least, it was intended to be a four-way discussion. Despite the moderator's best efforts, it quite quickly deteriorated into an exasperated and highly entertaining bun-fight between the journalist who made the opening statement (which he has posted as a "speech" here) and the comedian and critical-thinking promoter Robin Ince (who has blogged about the exchange here).

I spent the time playing "Bullshit Narrative Bingo" as the journalist obligingly ran through nearly every one of the tell-tale signs of a bogus fall-from-grace story. These red flags are the narrative tricks I look for whenever I suspect that someone is seeking to rail against the current state of affairs, but knows absolutely nothing about how, when or why it came about, or what can be done to change it. I thought I'd share my observations, because these are useful indications of Bad History, in the same way that incomplete or misinterpreted statistics are indications of Bad Science.

My notes are rather sketchy, and I don't wish to misrepresent the journalist's arguments (much of the fun happened when he was asked to elaborate on the points made in his opening statement) but here are the items I ticked off, and the examples I wrote down at the time. Hopefully, there will be an official recording or transcript available, at which point I will amend anything which I have reported incorrectly.

1. A "look how far we've come" introduction, establishing the speaker's credentials as a lover of the right kind of progress. In this case, it is the gradual extension of voting rights to people who were not considered to have specialised knowledge; In the past, working men and all women were excluded from the political process because it was assumed they did not have the intellectual capacity for it. Nothing to disagree with here, but for an opener, it was suspiciously unrelated to the question.

2. Assumption of novelty, without recourse to actual facts. The argument seemed to be that politicians nowadays lack the moral confidence to argue for their preferred course of action, and so are looking to scientific authority instead (I think this was when the smoking ban was mentioned as an example of when scientific arguments trumped moral ones). In fact, medical research and scientific developments were used by politicians back in the Victorian era and almost certainly earlier.

3. Description of a previously unbroken tradition. I can't remember if the number given was 2000 or 3000 years of politics being driven by morality and a sense of responsibility, but either way, this would be something of an oversimplification. Quite often in a bogus narrative, it is the 1950s which is described as the pinnacle of any such trend, and therefore as a golden age destroyed by the excesses of the 1960s. Which brings us to...

4. Call for a return to a more 'natural', 'traditional' or 'healthy' state. When asked, repeatedly for some indication of what scientists should do instead, one of the answers given was, "We need a healthy public space". I have no idea what this means, exactly, but who could possibly argue against health of any kind?

5. Magic keywords. Pro-tip: If you feel that your argument is looking a little thin in places, or that your audience may have forgotten that you're on the Right Side, sprinkle in some references to undeniably positive qualities such as "individual freedom" and "moral autonomy", even though these have little to do with the matter being discussed.

6. Unsubstantiated turning point. My recollection of this part is hazy, as there was a lot of grumbling, shouting and laughter from the audience and the argument seemed too ridiculous for anyone to make... but I think it was argued that since the 1970s, we've stopped pushing for economic growth because we've prioritised science-led environmental concerns instead. There may also have been something about a recent hatred of industrialisation around the same time because 'science' makes us worry about public health? In any case, the golden age of responsible, morality-based politics at some point changed to the current technocratic tyranny. Evidence for when and how this is supposed to have come about was not provided.

7. Ignoring other, obvious factors. In this case, I was surprised that nobody mentioned the development of the environmental movement, which is not known for having completely overlapping aims with all scientists.

8. Accusations.Veiled (or not) suggestion that the other side's argument is very like racism. From what I can remember, arguing that politicians should understand the probable impact of their policies (and gain this understanding via solid, scientifically-tested research) was compared to the introduction of tests designed to exclude minority voters in the American South. Understandably, this did not go down well.

All of this means that the only thing preventing me from shouting "house" was a lack of mention of the Nazis, and a reference to "authoritarian governments since Labour", combined with the racism comparison, came pretty damn close.

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For some further reflection on the panel: http://geekdom.daphshez.com/2013/04/i-went-to-manchester-and-all-i-got-you.html